The Decline of Indonesia’s Leadership Role in ASEAN: Systemic and Domestic Constraints of Jokowi’s Foreign Policy Alterations

This article addresses how systemic stimuli and domestic constraints, specifically on the perception of foreign policy executives, influence Indonesia’s leadership decline in ASEAN under Joko Widodo’s first presidential term. Through the lens of neoclassical realism, it is concluded that Indonesia’s leadership decline in ASEAN is attributed to the changing geopolitical landscape of Asia, with the assertive rise of China and the need to find other models of grand strategies in facing the regional hegemon. Furthermore, there is a unified perception of the irrelevance of maintaining a leadership role in ASEAN, and how the foreign policy executives of the Indonesian President and the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have concluded to this approach. Implementation of this research is the contribution to the foreign policy framework in facing certain systemic stimuli in the region of Asia, and to understand the role of a unified perspective among foreign policy executives to the actual output of foreign policy. This article contributes to the discourses of; (1) neoclassical realism, specifically on the role of systemic stimuli and elite perceptions as intervening variables in understanding alterations in foreign policy behavior, and (2) empirical analysis of Indonesia’s leadership role in ASEAN during the presidency of Joko Widodo. Received: 16 August 2021 / Accepted: 25 October 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

India’s Withdrawal from Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)

The Sino-US competition in the Indo-Pacific has become a central issue in international relations and how the competition of both countries affects state behavior. This article attempts to provide explanations of India's behavior in deciding to leave the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement by using the neoclassical realism theory. Neoclassical realism believes that the actors' behavior is influenced by the constellation of international structures and domestic constellations. India's exit from RCEP was influenced by structural changes in the Indo-Pacific region, with the loss of China's balance of power marked by the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Moreover, the condition has been exacerbated by the pressure received by Narendra Modi at the domestic level with the emergence of rejection of India's involvement in RCEP. It has influenced Narendra Modi's perception, who was active in the region with the two factors above, decided to resign from RCEP.

China–Turkey Relations from the Perspective of Neoclassical Realism

There is plenty of studies focusing on China’s global outreach through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In tandem with this, the extensive literature on China depicts it as the next hegemon to succeed in the USA. Along this line, flourishing ties with various Asian nations, including the Middle Eastern countries, as a result of China’s recent foreign policy activism has been addressed extensively. While most research has been stressing the rising assertiveness of China in world politics, only a limited number of studies have touched upon the responses from middle or small powers against China’s ascent. Drawing from neoclassical realism, this article contends two levels of analysis for delineating the interaction between Turkey, a middle power, and China, a rising great power. First, the exchange between Turkey and the USA is vital in determining the cordial relations between Turkey and China. Alteration in the American policy vis-à-vis Turkey in the wake of the Arab Spring is relevant to Turkey’s growing relations with China. Second, is the rising anti-Westernism of foreign policy elites as part of the alteration in the strategic culture of Turkish politics, which makes Turkey’s rapprochement with China possible. Nevertheless, it should be noted that these two levels are intertwined and feed each other. Consequently, employing a neoclassical realist approach, the article argues that the middle powers’ stance against a rising hegemon is conditional upon the bilateral relations with the current hegemon and peculiarities of domestic politics.

Poland in the Digital Age

Within the three casual mechanisms known so far in relation to the emergence and spread of AI Nationalism, this short piece of research strives to combine recent IR literature involving cyberspace and AI with new insights from the institutional economic perspective and Neoclassical Realism, in order to make an introductory assessment focused on Poland’s geopolitical challenges in the Digital Era. Since the analytical focus of this article concentrates on the case of Poland, the discussion can be perhaps also relevant for other countries pertaining to Central-Eastern Europe.

To lead or not to lead: regional powers and regional leadership

Recent trends demonstrate that states with sufficient capabilities to be granted regional power status by its peers (primarily other states within their region) can nonetheless renounce regional leadership. This article analyzes the puzzling behavior of these detached or reluctant regional powers. We argue that resorting to an approach grounded in neoclassical realism is helpful to explain why regional powers might not exercise leadership. In this article regional leadership is conceptualized as an auxiliary goal within the grand strategy of a regional power. This goal will be pursued in the absence of certain structural and domestic constraints. Great power competition determines the incentives for regional leadership at the structural level. Capacity to extract and mobilize resources for foreign policy affects the decision to pursue leadership at the domestic level. We apply the analytical framework to analyze Brazil’s detachment from South America after the Cardoso and Lula presidencies.

Indonesia’s Global Maritime Fulcrum: From Hedging to Underbalancing

This article examines why Indonesia’s vision of the Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) was not properly developed in accordance to its strategic response to the increased rivalry between China and the USA in the Asia-Pacific region. Although the GMF initially focussed on achieving domestic agendas, Indonesia’s implicit intention is to utilise the GMF as a hedge in order to strengthen economic cooperation with China while keeping the USA engaged in the region’s security architecture. My article seeks to go beyond the existing literature’s employment of primarily structural realist analysis to understand Indonesia’s strategic behaviour by applying a neoclassical realist approach to Indonesia’s case, which better demonstrates current conditions exhibiting how conflicting elite interests generate political discord which in turn hinders the state’s ability to extract and mobilise domestic resources, ultimately hampering Indonesia’s ability to achieve its GMF goals. Although certain threats and opportunities within the international system have manifested themselves to actively encourage the proper implementation of GMF, this strategy remains underdeveloped since the time of its launch. Neoclassical realism provides a better explanation that enhances our understanding of how Indonesia assesses and responds to its strategic environment.

Balancing with Jokowi’s Characteristics: A Neoclassical Realism Approach to Indonesia’s Foreign and Security Policies in the South China Sea

The objectives of this article are twofold. First, it seeks to posit Jokowi’s foreign and security policies in the broader historical context of Indonesian foreign and security policymaking. Throughout history, Indonesia’s responses to its external environment, as manifested in its foreign and security policies, have been significantly influenced by a range of domestic factors including leaders’ personality and his/her attitude to international politics. Building upon the historical observation, this article seeks to understand Jokowi’s foreign and security policies in the South China Sea using a neoclassical realism framework. It argues that there has been a shift in Indonesia’s approach to the South China Sea problem, characterised by a more active and pragmatic diplomacy and a more assertive approach to territorial integrity. Both components, however, are not deterministic products of external threats as predicted by neorealist theories. Instead, they are influenced by Jokowi’s personality, attitude towards foreign and security policy and preoccupation of his administration with the domestic agenda.

Explaining Indonesia’s Under-balancing: The Case of the Modernisation of the Air Force and the Navy

The current maritime challenges that Indonesia faced had not led to the development of the navy and air force. While theories of neoclassical realism highlighted the importance of domestic factors when determining responses at the strategic level, inefficiencies within the state bureaucracy had often been the bane of prudent policies. Our article attempts to engage with the neorealist concept of under-balancing to look at the reasons why there is stagnation in Indonesia’s naval and air force development. The proponents of under-balancing blamed inefficient bureaucracy as the cause of the issue. Our study on Indonesia’s naval and air force development indicated that inefficient bureaucracy was not the only driver of under-balancing. Looking at the agenda of naval and air force modernisation, this research argues the lack of commitment from the government, limited economic sources and the different modernisation priorities at the military unit level that had greatly contributed to the mismatch between systemic pressure and the response, in this case through naval and air force development, against it.

Neorealism, neoclassical realism and the problem(s) of history

Following scholarship on IR’s ‘historical turn’ as well as on neorealism and neoclassical realism, this article finds fault particularly in neorealism’s implicit reliance on the historically contingent but incompletely conceptualised transmission of systemic factors into state behaviour. Instead, it suggests that neoclassical realism (NCR) is well-suited to leveraging ‘history’ in systematic and general explanation. This article interrogates two routes towards a historically sensitive NCR (intervening variables and structural modifiers), and how they enable different operationalisations of ‘history’ as a sequence of events, cognitive tool or collective narrative. The first route suggests history underpins concepts and variables currently used by neoclassical realists. Here, history is more easily operationalised and allows a clearer view at learning and emulation processes. It is also more clearly scoped, and therefore less ‘costly’ in terms of paradigmatic distinctiveness. The second route, in which history modifies structural incentives and constraints, is more theoretically challenging especially in terms of differentiating NCR from constructivist approaches, but lends itself to theorising systemic change. Both routes provide fruitful avenues for realist theorising, can serve to emancipate NCR from neorealism in IR and foster cross-paradigmatic dialog. Examining how ‘history’ can be leveraged in realism allows interrogating how other ‘mainstream’, positivist approaches can and should leverage historical contingency, context and evidence to explain international processes and outcomes.

Neoclassical Realism in Japan’s Space Security

Japan’s space security commands attention as the country shifts toward internationalism in a world returned to great power competition. Using the framing from neoclassical realism, this article discusses the ways in which Japan has adjusted both its internal portfolio and its external postures to balance against perceived threats in outer space. While neoclassical realism is foundational for understanding what motivates, empowers, and constrains states in the space domain, the article also layers in the importance of international law to the conduct of statecraft within it. Doing so gives us a more holistic understanding of the material, legal, and normative evolution of Japan’s winding space trajectories. Although Japan’s Basic Space Law of 2008 is seen as a watershed event for legal and policy purposes, the law merely caught up with the extraordinary quality and range of Japan’s long-evolving dual-use space technologies. It is these autonomous foundations that empower Japan to pursue three distinct strategies in its interest—counterspace capabilities, organizational changes, and space diplomacy—with implications for both rivals and allies in a changed world order.